key words Flashcards
ACTION CODE
Something that happens in the narrative that tells the audience that some action will follow, for example in a scene from a soap opera, a couple are intimate in a bedroom and the camera shows the audience the husband’s car pulling up at the front of the house.
ACTIVE AUDIENCE
Audiences who actively engage in selecting media products to consume and interpret their meanings.
ANCHORAGE
The words that accompany an image (still or moving) give the meaning associated with that image. If the caption or voiceover is changed, then so may be the way in which the audience interprets the image. An image with an anchor is a closed text; the audience are given a preferred reading. A text without an anchor is an open text as the audience can interpret it as they wish.
APPEAL
The way in which products attract and interest an audience e.g. through the use of stars, familiar genre conventions etc.
ASPIRATIONAL
In terms of a media text one that encourages the audience to want more money, up market consumer items and a higher social position.
ATTRACT
How media producers appeal to audiences to encourage them to consume the product.
AUDIENCE CATEGORISATION
How media producers group audiences (e.g. by age, gender, ethnicity) to target their products.
AUDIENCE CONSUMPTION
The way in which audiences engage with media products (e.g. viewing a TV programme, playing a video game, reading a blog or magazine). Methods of consumption have changed significantly due to the development of digital technologies.
AUDIENCE INTERPRETATION
The way in which audiences ‘read’ the meanings in, and make sense of, media products.
AUDIENCE RESPONSE
How audiences react to media products e.g. by accepting the intended meanings (preferred reading).
BRAND IDENTITY
The association the audience make with the brand, for example Chanel or Nike, built up over time and reinforced by the advertising campaigns and their placement.
BROADSHEET
A larger newspaper that publishes more serious news, for example The Daily Telegraph has maintained its broadsheet format.
CAPTION
Words that accompany an image that explain its meaning.
CHANNEL IDENTITY
The aspects which make the channel recognisable to audiences and different from any other channel. Presenters, stars, programme genres and specific programmes all contribute to a channel’s identity.
CIRCULATION
The dissemination of media products - the method will depend on the media form, e.g. circulation of print magazines, broadcast of television programmes etc.
COLLOQUIAL LANGUAGE
This is conversational language where the words used are different from and less formal than those in written speech.
COMMERCIAL CHANNELS
These are channels like ITV and Channel 4 that raise their money through advertising, unlike the BBC which currently gets its money from the licence fee.
CONNOTATION
The suggested meanings attached to a sign, e.g., the red car in the advert suggests speed and power.
CONVENTIONS
What the audience expects to see in a particular media text, for example the conventions of science fiction films may include: aliens, scientists, other worlds, gadgets, representations of good and evil. Useful headings to discuss conventions are: characters, setting, iconography, narrative, technical codes and representation.
CONVERGENCE
The coming together of previously separate media industries and/or platforms; often the result of advances in technology whereby one device or platform contains a range of different features. The mobile phone, for example, allows the user to download and listen to music, view videos, tweet artists etc. All this can be done through one portable device.
COVER LINES
These suggest the content to the reader and often contain teasers and rhetorical questions. These relate to the genre of the magazine.
CROSS-PLATFORM MARKETING
In media terms, a text that is distributed and exhibited across a range of media formats or platforms. This may include film, television, print, radio and the Internet.
DEMOGRAPHIC CATEGORY
A group in which consumers are placed according to their age, sex, income, profession, etc. The categories range from A to E where categories A and B are the wealthiest and most influential members of society.
DENOTATION
The description of what you can see/hear in a media text, e.g. the car in the advert is red.
DIEGETIC SOUND
Sound that comes from the fictional world and can be seen, for example the sound of a gun firing, the cereal being poured into the bowl in an advert, etc.
DISRUPTION
This is what changes the balance in the story world; it may be a character or an event, for example a murder.
DISTRIBUTION
The methods by which media products are delivered to audiences, including the marketing campaign. These methods
will depend upon the product (for example, distribution companies in the film industry organise the release of the films).
DIVERSIFICATION
Where media organisations who have specialised in producing media products in one form move into producing content across a range of forms.
ENCODING AND DECODING
Media producers encode messages and meanings in products that are decoded, or interpreted, by audiences.
ENIGMA CODE
A narrative device which increases tension and audience interest by only releasing bits of information, for example teasers in a film trailer. Narrative strands that are set up at the beginning of a drama/film that makes the audience ask questions; part of a restricted narrative.
EQUILIBRIUM
In relation to narrative, a state of balance or stability (in Todorov’s theory the equilibrium is disrupted and restored)
FAN
An enthusiast or aficionado of a particular media form or product.
FEATURE
In magazine terms, the main, or one of the main, stories in an edition. Features are generally located in the middle of the magazine, and cover more than one or two pages.
FOUR Cs
This stands for Cross Cultural Consumer Characteristics and was a way of categorising consumers into groups through their motivational needs. The main groups were Mainstreamers, Aspirers, Explorers, Succeeders and Reformers.
FRANCHISE
An entire series of, for example, a film including the original film and all those that follow.
GATEKEEPERS
The people responsible for deciding the most appropriate stories to appear in newspapers. They may be the owner, editor or senior journalists. They will only let the stories most appropriate for the ideology of the paper ‘through the gate’.
GENRE
Media texts can be grouped into genres that all share similar conventions. Science fiction is a genre, as are teenage magazines, etc.
GLOBAL
Worldwide - e.g. a media product with global reach is a product that is distributed around the world.
HOUSE STYLE
What makes the magazine recognisable to its readers every issue. The house style is established through the choice of colour, the layout and design, the font style, the content and the general ‘look’ of the publication.
HYBRID GENRE
Media texts that incorporate elements of more than one genre and are therefore more difficult to classify. Dr Who, for example, is a science fiction/fantasy television drama.
ICONOGRAPHY
The props, costumes, objects and backgrounds associated with a particular genre; for example, in a police series you would expect to see, uniforms, blue flashing lights, scene of crime tape and police radios.
